


Skin

by hellkitty



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Random War Boy, old ladiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-05-29
Packaged: 2018-04-01 21:04:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4034533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, I should be working on that chapter in my book about Her, The Machine and Ex Machina about how all these movies create a female AI as a sort of Galatea/Lilith clusterfuckstravaganza, where rich straight white dudes decide actual women have like..you know, flaws and crap so they figure they'll make a perfect woman and then GET COMEUPPANCE because women are apparently evil or too perfect for them but either way CANNOT BE TRUSTED.  </p>
<p>This is me procrastinating, okay? Besides, Miss Giddy is the bomb. And I really need to update my slang.  </p>
<p>Prompt was 'Care's an enemy to life'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skin

The Citadel was never truly quiet.  Even in those few hours when the repair bays were shut down, when it was too dark to run the electricity full power, it was never entirely silent.  There was always some noise: the muffled wailing of a guitar echoing down the stone hallways, the ambient thunder of water, the wind stirring the turbines above.  It was never entirely quiet, but at some hours of the night, even the Citadel pulled itself into a sort of drowsing hush, shrouded by darkness.  And those hours were when Miss Giddy would slip out of the Solarium, her still-nimble feet wrapped in rags against the broken glass, ten feet up. 

Maybe the wives saw it; they dreamed of escape enough that it would be strange that they didn’t. But to them, escaping into the Citadel, bustling with War Boys and imperators, was no escape at all.  

To her, though, the Citadel was the best she could hope for.  She was too old to escape, too old to do much but wait to die here, and with her, all the stories she knew, all the names and places of note inked into her powdery old skin. She nodded at an Imperator, walking the corridors on his rounds of nightwatch. He nodded back, mute and respectful enough. She knew she’d be watched--she always was--but that was all.  

To be old, she thought, gathering her shawl around her, was in some part to be comfortable in your limitations. Only the young had the immense dreams of freedom and glory. The old...wanted peace. Peace and nothing more.  

She paused at the threshold of the infirmary--the quiet here was like the quiet of an ocean at night, a constant restless susurration, of slaves in their cages, who watched her, dull-eyed and despairing, and the sick War Boys themselves, slumped and draped over the rough stone.  

Ginger for Angharad, she reminded herself. And the Dag, too, claims she’s feeling it--the nausea of quickening.  Miss Giddy remembered a time when there was medicine for it--promethazine. She’d taken it herself as a young woman, before...before any of this.  Ginger was an old folk remedy her nana had taught her, like a sacred woman’s knowledge, and it was the best she could do for the Wives.  

She moved down the aisle of the infirmary, tucking her skirts against her legs as she dodged the slumped bodies and limbs jutting into space, trying not to look at faces, trying not to see them as they were. 

But she couldn’t--she never could--Miss Giddy was made up of stories, of the things people did that made them human--tragic and brave and wonderful.  The War Boys...their stories were all the same, and she’d run out of skin long ago, for the tale of the flame of adolescence, burning bright, burning out under the weight of disease, clinging with ash-black fingers to the hope of a second life, an afterlife of being special, being chosen. 

She stopped, so sharply her skirt swept ahead of her, and turned her head to look the boy beside her in the face.  The stone around him was damp-darked, beads of sweat making slow trails down his forehead, across his chest.  

He was a beautiful boy, Miss Giddy thought.  Or he should have been--a jawline clean and straight, wide eyes, the swoop of his collarbones over wings of muscle.  In the right line, from the right angle, you couldn’t see the lumps clustered like burls around the column of his throat.  His hand, resting limp on his chest, fingers tangled in the IV line, twitched, then his foot, as some dream gripped him.  

She wondered what they dreamed about, these War Boys--if even their imaginations had been shackled to Immortan Joe and impossible dreams of glorious combat.  

He gave a half-groan of sound, brows contracting, and Miss Giddy couldn’t stop herself from stepping closer, taking the hem of her shawl to smooth over his brow.  

The eyes flashed open, almost alarmed, and they were that bright, almost incandescent blue that glimmered even in the half-light.  “What--” he said, and his voice was almost choked, hand lashing out before he caught himself. She could feel his eyes on her, taking in her withered skin, older than he’d ever be, and the careful calligraphy covering her.  

“Miss Giddy,” he said, after a moment, like a struggle to get his dream-dowsed brain online.  

She nodded, and then moved, perching one hip on the stone platform beside him, her skirt just brushing his hip. Old and young, beautiful and diseased against withered and well.  It was a contrast, and the hoarders of words lived for contrasts.  So she laid her hand over his, feeling the clamminess of his night sweats, and underneath, the pulse of a heart burning out too fast, too soon, and offered a smile. 

“Tell me, what is your name? What is your story?”  She had enough skin for one more name, she figured.    



End file.
